wedding bells and pea moonshine
by queendementor
Summary: mary lou is marrying her leaf machine. if only it were as simple as that.


**wedding bells and pea moonshine**

_a/n: don't ask._

The old, rickety contraption that did little but rattle and spew foliage had gone by many names over the course of its life. It had been a leaflet machine, then a leaf machine, and now it was soon to become Mary Lou's husband. Understandably, there was much work to be done, especially considering that Mary Lou was so eager to begin her new life with the leaf machine that she'd left only four days in which to plan everything.

And there was much to be done. The children would all need new clothing, as nothing they owned was suitable for an occasion such as this. A loaf of dampish bread would have to be frosted and adorned with peas, for no wedding was complete without a cake. Mary Lou's extensive collection of peas would also need to be toilet-trained before the wedding, as it wouldn't do to have them making a mess. Not to mention all the invitations and decorations...

All of which fell to Credence, Chastity, and Modesty, because Mary Lou planned to make a wedding dress out of leaves and she needed all the time she could get.

-x-

The one thing Mary Lou was willing to help them with was the selection of appropriate attire. She took them to a clothing shop where everything for sale looked about fifty years old and the mannequins in the window looked about to melt in the sun.

Chastity and Modesty, it was decided, would carry bouquets of leaves at the wedding, and Mary Lou insisted their dresses had to match perfectly, so she brought along the leaves she planned to use. While the slightly confused man who worked at the shop tried to color-match dresses to a pile of foliage, Mary Lou took Credence aside to look for a suit.

It wasn't enough to simply find a decent suit for a wedding. Credence had to adhere to the overall leaf aesthetic of the event, and everything Mary Lou shoved at him to try on was either brown or red, most likely because the shop didn't carry green. Not to mention that she either didn't know what size he wore or didn't really care, because Credence either needed a second belt to keep his pants on or had to have his arms forcefully removed from his suit jacket.

In the end, Credence ended up with a brown suit that was fortunately only two sizes too large. "He'll grow into it," Mary Lou said when the young shopkeeper offered them something a little smaller. The man looked doubtful, but no more was said on the matter, and after looking through the options matched to the leaves, Mary Lou began to do the same thing to her daughters.

Modesty's dress, which was an approved shade of red, was too small, and Chastity's pinched her waist, but of course Mary Lou insisted on purchasing the ill-fitting clothing anyway.

As they passed a shoe store on the way back, arms laden with all their new purchases, Mary Lou suddenly decided the children needed new shoes as well. Fifteen minutes later, she had selected three pairs of shoes to match the leaf aesthetic, and again, she had just taken the first three boxes she saw, so there was absolutely no guarantee the children would even be able to get their feet into them.

But the last thing any of the Barebone children wanted to do was argue with their mother, especially when she was in the mindset that made her decide she wanted to marry her leaf machine. Besides, they were used to ill-fitting clothing already.

Their other tasks, however, were an entirely different story. The next day, while Credence and Modesty made a three-tier pea cake out of a few loaves of dampish bread, Chastity would be in the bathroom toilet-training Mary Lou's peas. The worst, the children knew, had yet to come.

-x-

As soon as the sun rose in the morning, Mary Lou ordered Chastity out of bed and gave her a large bowl of peas. "You have until the day of the wedding to complete their training," she said, ignoring her daughter's nauseous expression at the smell of the peas. "I will trust you to complete your task without my confirmation, but you are aware of what will happen if you break my trust."

_Just__ lovely_, Chastity thought as she set herself and the bowl on the floor of the bathroom. Not only was Mary Lou forcing her to toilet-train peas at six in the morning, but she wouldn't even tell her how to do it. What was she supposed to do? Put the peas on the toilet and see if anything happened?

That seemed as good an idea as any. Chastity selected five peas from the bowl and gently set them on the toilet seat. But she must have placed them too close to the edge, because when she turned to place more peas, only two were still there. The other three had fallen into the toilet.

The next round of peas were placed as steadily as Chastity could manage, but this time, four of the seven peas dropped into the toilet.

This was impossible. She was supposed to toilet-train the peas, but Chastity couldn't even keep the peas out of the toilet. And if she saw that Chastity had failed her task, it was entirely possible that Mary Lou might force her daughter to _eat_ the toilet peas.

Even the thought of touching peas that had been in the toilet made her want to begin to nausea. However, it did inspire her to find a way, _any_ way, to toilet-train her mother's peas. At the very least, handling peas was better than having to eat them.

-x-

While Chastity struggled with what had to be the strangest chore Mary Lou had ever assigned her, Credence and Modesty tried to figure out how to form dampish bread into a cake. If told to just make a cake out of it, they might have baked it a bit to make the bread a little less damp, and then frosted it and topped it off with peas. But of course Mary Lou wanted it to be three tiers, and by tiers, they knew she didn't mean to just stack the loaves on top of each other.

"Why don't we just find a pan?" Modesty offered. "We could just put some of the bread inside, put in some peas for good measure, and bake it. At least that might be a little better than just stacking the dampish bread."

While she measured out the appropriate amount of peas, Credence searched for a pan in which to bake the dampish cake. But when he opened the cupboard door an avalanche of peas spilled out. Both Credence and Modesty had to fight the urge to begin to nausea as the smell of peas assaulted their nostrils.

"Too many peas," Modesty gasped out, trying not to gag.

After finding a suitable vessel for baking a cake, they pushed all the peas back into the cupboard where they belonged, knowing they wouldn't be allowed to throw them away even though they were already drowning in Mary Lou's peas.

While the dampish bread gradually baked until it became a little less dampish, Credence took on the job of checking on it while Modesty began the invitations. After including the necessary information, she drew a leaf on each, because she knew Mary Lou would want leaf representation, but wouldn't allow Modesty to affix any of her real leaves to the invitations.

-x-

Whatever trouble Credence and Modesty were having with the cake, Chastity thought, at least it was better than her chore. About one in every four peas in the bowl was now in the toilet, and the ones that did stay on the toilet seat simply refused to do anything. How did one even convince peas to use the toilet?

The only thing that even resembled a solution came when she picked up one of the peas at the very bottom of the bowl. When Chastity held it over the toilet, to her relief, a small amount of juice dripped from it.

That was it. Peas simply weren't able to be toilet-trained, because peas didn't produce waste. But if Chastity drained the juice from the bowl of peas, perhaps it would be enough to convince Mary Lou that she had indeed managed to toilet-train the peas.

She flushed the fallen peas down the toilet, then, scooping the peas out of the bowl, Chastity dumped the remaining juice into the toilet. By the time she had replaced all the peas in their bowl, Mary Lou had appeared in the doorway and wanted to check her progress.

-x-

The first tier of the dampish bread cake had just finished baking (and was no longer dampish) when Chastity, who smelled strongly of peas, entered the room. Credence put her to work making the frosting, which was colored an autumn red to match the leaf aesthetic.

In the end, while the three tiers were a little bit lopsided, the cake ended up adhering almost perfectly to the standards Mary Lou had provided. After the cake was frosted, Modesty decorated it with peas, Credence took care of the plating, and Chastity, upon finding a leaf in her sister's hair, removed it and gently set it atop the cake as a decoration.

If not for the peas, the Barebones decided, the cake actually would have looked like something they wanted to eat. And a few hours later, when their mother pried herself away from her leaf dress to see their progress on the cake, she couldn't even come up with a genuine complaint about it. This would have been a considerable relief if the day ahead of them wasn't one of distributing invitations and trying to form the piles of leaves around the church into something presentable.

-x-

Like the day before, the children found themselves risen before the sun and sent off to perform various wedding tasks. With the invitations made, Modesty was given the guest list and sent off to hand them out, and while Chastity tried to turn leaves into tasteful decorations, Credence decided now might be a good time to place a call to Mary Lou's mother.

"Credence, you know I love to hear from you," Mary Lou's mother sounded tired as she answered, and he realized he had probably woken her up. "But this is hardly a sensible hour, don't you think?"

"I-I'm sorry, ma'am," Credence told her. "We were up already and working on decorations, and it didn't occur to me..."

"Now, first of all, I have told you countless times to call me Grandmother, my boy. I'm hardly a stranger. And second, what is my daughter having you decorate at this hour?"

"We're decorating the church, ma– Grandmother. She's getting married tomorrow."

Mary Lou's mother made a sort of noise Credence couldn't quite place. "I can only imagine what kind of spineless shrimp of a man would want to marry _her_!"

Credence considered telling his grandmother that her new son-in-law would actually be the leaf machine, which she had expressed her distaste for. But he knew that if she thought her daughter was going to marry her leaf machine, she would be at the church in a matter of hours, ready to call off the whole thing. And while he knew the whole situation was more than a bit ridiculous, he was also fully aware that if he did anything that had even a chance of jeopardizing Mary Lou's profession of love for her leaf machine, his mother would probably beat him so badly he wouldn't be able to move for the rest of the month.

So he said nothing more on the matter, and after the conversation ended a short while later, he helped Chastity form leaves into small piles for guests to sit on during the ceremony.

When Modesty returned, her siblings were working on the place settings made from dried leaves. She informed them they would need at least fourteen, but they had already made four extras, because knowing Mary Lou there would be about a dozen excess guests she didn't see fit to inform her children of.

By the end of the evening, the children never wanted to see another leaf as long as they lived. Leaves adorned the altar, formed centerpieces, and were generally placed anywhere they possibly could be. Having paused only for a small bowl of pea soup around midday, they could all say they had used leaves whenever possible, and the possibilities were endless.

Exhausted and pulling leaves from their clothes, Credence, Chastity, and Modesty trudged off to bed as soon as they could. They knew that tomorrow, the day of the wedding, would be very eventful in more ways than one.

-x-

The day of the wedding dawned bright, sunny, and, like the day before, at a very early hour. Most likely because the marriage itself was only hours away now, Mary Lou seemed to be in a better mood than usual, and instead of the usual morning pea soup, she provided the children with bitter grass candy. Hence the name, it tasted like bitter grass, but at least bitter grass was better than peas.

While his mother put the final touches on her leaf dress, Credence decided now would be a good time to put on his own clothing for the wedding. He put on his brown pants and belt, and then, when the pants were still loose, added a second belt. Only now did the pants feel like they would stay up if Credence let go of them. The rest of the suit was equally oversized, and Credence felt as if a large, heavy blanket had been thrown over his shoulders instead of a suit jacket. But it could be worse. The last time he had required formalwear, Mary Lou had given him pants that were several sizes too small and then beaten him when he couldn't get them on.

Besides, at least his shoes fit.

By the time he arrived downstairs, the earliest wedding guests were beginning to arrive. As his sisters were nowhere to be found, Credence took it upon himself to show them all to their leaf pile seats.

Modesty appeared a short while later in her too-small dress and her shoes that had to be stuffed with leaves in order to stay on. "What do you want me to do?" she asked, looking around at the leaves that decorated every surface in the room.

"Find the guests their seats," Credence decided. "Someone will have to get the leaf machine, and I don't think you would like to find out what will happen if you drop it."

Modesty winced at the very idea. Mary Lou, like most people, would probably not appreciate it if her children dropped her husband and broke him.

While Modesty pasted on a smile and offered to show a man to his leaf pile, Credence left the room to pick up his mother's leaf machine for the ceremony.

He arrived only to find Chastity almost frozen in the doorway. "Don't look," she tried to warn her brother.

But it was too late. Credence had already seen what could only be described as a Mary Lou underwear moment, complete with a bottle of pea moonshine. Not only was he forced to look at his mother's underwear, but he had certainly found the leaf machine. The leaf machine...which his mother had in a place no woman should ever have a leaf machine.

Both he and Chastity were beginning to nausea as they left and hurriedly found something else to do.

-x-

Around the time all the guests were deposited on their leaf piles, Mary Lou summoned Credence to retrieve the leaf machine for the wedding. Trying not to think about what had been done with it, he carried the leaf machine down the aisle and deposited it on a leaf-adorned stand.

Modesty got a last-minute promotion to the position of flower girl (or leaf girl, as there were no flowers present,) to buy her mother extra time to ensure her leaf dress was perfectly in place. Chastity took her bouquet of leaves, matching her dress perfectly, and slipped from the room. Only Credence had yet to be given a task.

He didn't know what he was expecting. But as the wedding march began and Mary Lou told him he was going to walk her down the aisle about two seconds before he had to do it, Credence was certain it wasn't that.

The beginning of the ceremony was surprisingly painless. The voice of the wedding officiant threatened to put Credence to sleep, but fortunately for the man, Credence had a leaf in his sock that was too uncomfortable to allow him to doze.

But it did mean that Credence was so busy trying to dislodge the leaf without his mother seeing him that he heard very little of what was said until...

"If anyone here at this time knows a reason why this woman and her leaf machine should not be wed, speak now or forever hold your -"

_"I object!"_

The door swung open to admit Mary Lou's mother, who was clearly furious as she stormed into the room. "No daughter of mine will marry a copy machine," she proclaimed.

"It's a _leaf machine_," Mary Lou corrected, sounding very much like a toddler who had just been denied a pet unicorn.

"Whatever you want to call it, I put up with your love of that thing because you are my daughter and that is what you do for family, not that you would know anything about that," her mother added under her breath. "But standing back and allowing you to marry an inanimate object is going too far."

As she watched the scene that unfolded before her eyes, Chastity waited for her grandmother to finish her sentence before she asked, "I apologize, Grandmother, but I wasn't aware you knew Mother was going to marry her leaf machine."

"I didn't. If Credence hadn't called and told me yesterday, I would have only found out in a few months when he contacted me about something my daughter did and I had to come here and reprimand her."

"Does this mean we can't have the wedding?" Modesty asked, still clutching her bouquet of leaves.

Mary Lou's mother was silent a moment, looking first at her daughter in her leaf dress, then at her grandchildren, then at the display of leaves around her. Finally, she came to her decision.

"Go on, then," she decided. "Marry your copy machine. But I'm only allowing this because I won't be here forever and I suppose I'd prefer that you not die alone."

Not only did Mary Lou's mother change her mind, she also sat down on a pile of leaves to observe the ceremony. Under any other circumstances, it might have simply been a motherly gesture, putting her own feelings aside for Mary Lou's happiness.

But it was only then that the Barebones realized exactly how much their mother was leaning on Credence, and that clarified everything. Mary Lou's mother knew her daughter was impossible to reason with when she drank enough pea moonshine.

Though that did lead to the question of whether or not Mary Lou would be able to get through the ceremony.

The officiant continued to talk. The church continued to smell of leaves. Beside Credence, Mary Lou drunkenly muttered something about seamstresses surrendering to their peers in the toilet. Her mother made a faint noise of disapproval as she plucked a leaf from her hair. As the ceremony went on and on, the Barebone children wondered how long it would be until Mary Lou was either married to her leaf machine or given over entirely to the influence of pea moonshine.

Next came the vows. Gently taking the handle of the leaf machine, Mary Lou promised to love it unconditionally as long as she lived, as well as take care of its maintenance, and when prompted, the leaf machine spit some leaves at the woman attempting to marry it. What exactly that meant was entirely unknown, but its fiancée seemed to approve.

Finally, the officiant said something Credence could actually make out. "You may kiss your bride."

Perhaps it was the pea moonshine, her consuming love for the leaf machine, or a combination of both, but the guests watched as Mary Lou gave the leaf machine a slightly obscene kiss that went on a little longer than it needed to. Modesty made a disgusted face until her brother politely suggested she look at her grandmother instead. As she spun to face Mary Lou's mother, still perched on a pile of leaves, Credence overheard the officiant ask his mother what her leaf machine's name was.

A pause. Mary Lou clearly hadn't thought to give it a name before. It was obvious she selected the first name she thought of when she muttered, "His name is Ivan," and proceeded to stare into space.

"Then may I present, for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Ivan Barebone!"

As the confused attendees gradually began to applaud hesitantly, Mary Lou picked up her leaf machine and cradled it as if it were a baby. She intended to leave the room, but barely made it a few steps before she stumbled and sent both herself and her husband to the floor.

"You go on," Mary Lou's mother said to her grandchildren, stepping forward and trying to force her inebriated daughter into a standing position. "I'll take care of this."

The children immediately did so.

At the very least, they thought, they knew that they weren't very likely to be beaten for somehow screwing up a wedding their mother probably wouldn't remember. But that didn't mean they could relax yet.

-x-

Only a meal and dampish bread leaf pea cake were planned for after the ceremony, to allow Mary Lou plenty of time with her new husband. "Probably to continue what they were doing earlier," Chastity said in disgust.

Like most meals eaten in this particular church, this one was barely memorable and consisted primarily of peas. Mary Lou had somehow managed to reclaim her pea moonshine, which she poured into a glass to make her mother think she was having considerably less. But one glass turned into four before Modesty, the first to finish, was halfway through her pea soup.

At this point, Mary Lou seemed barely aware of what was happening around her, focusing entirely on her leaf machine - her husband, which she had apparently named Ivan. When it came time to cut the dampish bread leaf pea cake, she swung the knife around precariously, prompting her mother to take it from her.

"You are not going to put yourself in the hospital on your wedding day, Mary Lou," she said sharply before cutting a piece and giving it to her daughter.

She proceeded to offer slices to the guests, starting with the children, before moving onto the others. But she had only just given one to a balding man with a reedy voice when she felt something hit her in the back of the head.

Apparently Mary Lou was trying to feed some of her cake to Ivan, who promptly launched twelve perfect copies of the cake across the room. And as her mother turned around, she noticed she seemed to be highly amused by this and was about to do it again.

Mary Lou's mother confiscated the cake and set it aside, taking her daughter by the wrist and half-dragging her from the room. "This is precisely why I knew this wedding was a poor idea!" she said. "And precisely why you are going to go to bed and stop wasting everyone's time."

Once the two women were gone, Modesty whispered to her siblings, "Do you think we could pick the peas out of our cake now?"

Without even bothering to verbally respond, Credence and Chastity both used their forks to pile the peas onto their napkins. Perhaps they might enjoy some dampish bread with frosting before explaining to all of their mother's guests that they were terribly sorry and she wasn't usually like this.

-x-

Once everyone had left, Credence surveyed the damage. His grandmother must have returned downstairs for the leaf machine, but the cake it had consumed still lay on the floor. Modesty took it upon herself to clean it up.

Credence decided to go upstairs and exchange his oversized leaf aesthetic suit for something that might actually fit. After all, if he would have to clean up all the leaves and peas, then he didn't want to risk losing his pants.

When he got upstairs, he was shaken from his thoughts by the sound of his grandmother's voice. Credence peeked into the room. Instead of spending her wedding night canoodling with her leaf machine as she had probably wanted to do, Mary Lou spent it in bed with Ivan placed beside her, as her mother told her in a gentle voice that if she absolutely had to be married to her leaf machine, she could live with that, but getting drunk and throwing things everywhere was a bit too much.

Credence couldn't help but smile a little. After the events of the past few days, he found it strangely soothing to know that Mary Lou still wasn't too old to get the occasional lecture from her mother about her behavior.


End file.
